Woman Grows In Self-esteem With Degree, Job

Last Christmas, a dejected Diann Thompson was unable to buy her six young children any gifts. She could barely pay the rent on their dingy one-bedroom apartment.

This year, Thompson, 22, not only will purchase toys for her children, but even has enough money to buy a swing set for the back yard of their new, larger apartment in Fort Lauderdale.

Thompson has an even more important Christmas gift for herself -- something that doesn`t come in a box.

It is her self-esteem, which she discovered only recently, after a history of hard knocks.

``This Christmas will be better for me than any other one ever,`` she says. ``Last year, I tried so hard to get Christmas things for my kids, but my mother had to help out and I had to go to the Salvation Army. This is the first year I can buy toys myself and get a big gift for them too.``

Last Christmas, Thompson was a welfare mother who sometimes worked at fast- food chains. This year, she is a full-time nurse`s assistant with a new home, and a different outlook on life.

``I`m so proud of Diann. She really has changed,`` says Doreatha Fields, director of Cradle Nursery, the federally subsidized day-care center that three of Thompson`s children attend.

``This is the story of a fight against all odds. She had no motivation. No training. She would work, lose the job, start another one. I don`t know if she ever thought about tomorrow,`` recalls Fields. ``Now she`s up and at `em. She has a good job, a car. The children look fantastic. They`re happier. She`s a real success story.``

Thompson has come a long way from the time she had her first child at 15 and barely completed eighth grade.

Over the years, she said, she received no help from her children`s father, who is in jail.

After the birth of her sixth child, Nathaniel, in 1984, Thompson decided changes were in order.

She enrolled in a preparatory course for the General Equivalency Diploma and when she finished, she signed up in April for a nine-week nurse`s assistant program offered by the Broward County Vocational, Technical and Adult Education Division.

It was a decision that changed her life.

For weeks, Thompson would get up at 4 a.m., dress the children, take them by county bus to the day-care center and then go to her classes.

``It was such a long day,`` she recalls. ``I`d be so tired that I`d barely have time to fix them dinner and give them a bath.``

But for the first time in her life, Thompson stuck with it.

She completed the course, and in June, received her state certificate as a nurse`s assistant. She is now a private duty nurse for a home health agency.

She stopped receiving welfare and now gets no government assistance, aside from subsidized day-care programs.

``Diann is living proof that people can change their attitudes if they really want. She wanted to, and she did change,`` says Henrietta Mara, Thompson`s nursing instructor.

Thompson recalls that the day she finally got her certificate was the proudest of her life.

``I tried so hard to make it,`` she says. ``I couldn`t believe it when I actually got my certificate. I said, `Me? I did this!` ``